No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [111]
“We must prepare for war, if it comes. And I have several ideas, with the groundwork already laid, just in case. Everything we value depends on our success.” He rubbed his hand over his brow. “Goddamn it! The Germans are our natural allies. We come from the same blood, the same language, the same heritage of nature and character!”
He stopped for a moment, regaining his composure. “But perhaps it is no more than a setback. We don’t have the document, but neither do they. If they did, Matthew Reavley wouldn’t still be looking for it and asking questions.” His face hardened again. “We have to see at all costs that he doesn’t obtain that document. If it fell into the wrong hands, it would be disastrous!”
“Is Matthew Reavley the only one?” Mason asked.
“Oh, there’s another brother, Joseph, but he’s completely ineffectual,” the Peacemaker replied with a smile. “A scholar, idealist, retreated from life and responsibility. Teaches at Cambridge—biblical languages, of all things! He wouldn’t acknowledge the truth if it leaped up and bit him. He’s a dreamer. Nothing is going to waken him, because he doesn’t want to be disturbed. Reality hurts, Mason, and the Reverend Reavley doesn’t like pain. He wants to save the world by preaching a good, carefully thought-out, and well-reasoned sermon to them. He doesn’t realize that nobody’s listening—not with their hearts or their guts, or willing to pay the price for it. It’s up to us.”
“Yes,” Mason said. “I know that.”
“Of course you do.” The Peacemaker pushed his hands through his hair. “Go back to your writing. You have a gift. We may need it. Stay with your newspaper. If we can’t prevent it and the worst happens, get them to send you everywhere! Every battlefield, every advance or retreat, every town or city that’s captured, or where there are negotiations for peace. Become the most brilliant, the most widely read war correspondent in Europe . . . in the world. Do you understand?”
“Oh, yes,” Mason said with a soft hiss of breath between his teeth. “Of course I understand.”
“Good. Then you’d better go, but keep in touch.”
Mason turned and walked slowly to the door and out of it. His footsteps barely sounded on the stairs.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
In Cambridge, Joseph felt that he was achieving something, but it was all a matter of exclusion. He was no nearer to knowing what had happened, as opposed to what had not. And if Inspector Perth had made progress, he was keeping it to himself. The tension was increasing with every day. Joseph was determined to continue in whatever way he could to discover more about Sebastian and who had had reason to hate or to fear him.
An opportunity came to him when he was discussing a problem of interpretation with Elwyn, who was finding a particular passage of translation difficult.
They had walked from the lecture rooms together, and rather than go inside had chosen to cross the bridge to the Backs. It was a quiet afternoon. As they turned on the gravel path to go toward the shade, bees drifted lazily among the spires of delphiniums and late pinks by the wall of the covered walk. Bertie was rolling on the warm earth in between the snapdragons.
Elwyn was still showing signs of the shock and grief of loss. Joseph knew better than others how one can temporarily forget a cataclysm in one’s life, then remember it again with surprise and the renewal of pain. Sometimes one floated in a kind of unreality, as if the disaster were all imagination and in a little while would disappear and life be as it was before. One was tired without knowing why; concentration slipped from the grasp and slithered away.
It was not surprising that Elwyn was wandering off the point again, unable to keep his mind in control.
“I ought to get back to the master’s house,” he said anxiously. “Mother may be alone.”
“You can’t protect her from everything,” Joseph